


along the edges

by KestralWatcher



Series: saving space [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Background immortal husbands, Canon Compliant, Gen, I promised you 2k words about swords, Immortality, Slice of Life, gratuitous Highlander reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25808770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestralWatcher/pseuds/KestralWatcher
Summary: Buoyed by the genial atmosphere, and perhaps a bit by the liquor, Nile takes the risk of pushing. “What happened to Booker’s sword?” A three-way exchange of glances across the table occurs before her.Finally, Nicky says, “He does not carry one.”A family dinner.
Series: saving space [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870753
Comments: 31
Kudos: 447





	along the edges

**Author's Note:**

> This is canon compliant with the film, but a bit hand-wavy about the credits stinger
> 
> No beta, we die like immortals. But not those immortals.
> 
> Minor edits because my cat is named Nicki.

Nicky does not cook dinner every night, but the entire household makes sure to be present on the nights he does. These are the evenings for drawing out a good meal, good wine, and newly-formed friendships. The evenings Nile is most likely to get the best stories, and sometimes the best gossip, out of her older companions.

They offer up stories from the near and far past, snippets of missions, tales of misadventure. They never shield Nile from the bad facets, even if it means more than one of them hides tears behind sips of wine by the end of a particular story. Over the weeks, Nile eventually decides that they offer these stories as another way to envelope her into their world. To break down barriers before they can form.

The atmosphere is lighter tonight, as they sip the sweet hazelnut liquor Andy found in town and devour the plate of chocolate chip cookies Nile felt inspired to bake that afternoon, just for something completely different to do.

The theme of tonight’s stories is on the lighter side. Not the subject matter, necessarily, as Joe spins a tale of a drug ring that had dipped its toes into human trafficking. But in that the story ends with particular triumph—the rescue the five women before they can be forced into acting as surrogates for parents abroad who are fed lies about the person who will carry their child. The team destroys a significant cache of heroine to boot. Though not after trouble.

“Luckily, we knew that the boss considered himself some sort of aficionado,” Joe says. “And by that time, we’d cleared most of the compound’s idea of security.” He smirks and stuffs the rest of a cookie into his mouth.

Nicky picks up the next part of the story as seamlessly as if they rehearsed. “So, while Andy and—” He stumbles over the sentence, but recovers at once. “Andy got the girls out of the compound and toward the van, Joe and I headed back in.”

Nile never missed how a particular name often went unspoken during stories that took place within the past two centuries. Sometimes she let it pass, the decision made on a sliding scale of how well she is coming to know her new family. “Wait, so you’re telling me that you went _back_ into the house to get back your swords and Andy’s ridiculous ax, even after all you went through to get out?”

“It’s a _labrys_ ,” Andy said, her voice pointed as if she couldn’t recognize Nile’s teasing sarcasm. “And yes.”

Buoyed by the genial atmosphere, and perhaps a bit by the liquor, Nile takes the risk of pushing. “What happened to Booker’s sword?” A three-way exchange of glances across the table occurs before her.

Finally, Nicky says, “He does not carry one.”

The events at Merrick Pharmaceuticals had been far from a normal situation, but in the weeks since, Nile has seen Andy sharpening the _labrys_. Enjoys watching Nicky practice forms with his longsword on the veranda. Knows that Joe keeps his scimitar on a hook in his bedroom, in easy reach during the night. Nile cannot blame herself for assuming that Booker carried the same sort of “backup” on missions.

“Why not?” she asks. “I kind of imagined him with an old saber or something.” Then, she freezes. The words had tumbled out in a spurt of curiosity, but she knows to tread gently around mentions of their absent friend.

Joe and Nicky have one of their silent conversations, eyes dancing beneath a furrowed brow, a tilted head. Then, Nicky says, “Like you, Booker is of a different era than us. In Napoleon’s army, he was handed a firearm. Swords were reserved for the elite.”

“More of a badge of superiority than as a tool to be used,” Joe adds.

Nile nods, thoughts drifting to the ceremonial sword she’d been awarded when she made E-4. Did Mom keep it with the flag her family had been presented instead of her body? She jerks her attention back to the present. She can’t yet balance her grief over her lost past with her new family’s grief over their lost brother. Better to focus on one at a time. “Okay, I get that. I got the basic knife and hand-to-hand training, but the majority of my combat training operated under the assumption that I’d have a weapon in my hand.” Too late, she worries that they’d take the wrong meaning from her habitual use of the term for an issued firearm in combat, but Andy is already nodding along with her words.

“Yes, because modern militaries always train their soldiers how to fight the last war,” she says.

The conversation had kept to English so far, in deference to Nile’s still elementary understanding of Italian. Nicky drops into the language for an aside that prompts laughter from Joe and Andy, but he immediately explains, “Like when Belgium forces showed up on horseback against German tanks in the Great War.”

The mental image causes Nile to join in the laughter, but the other three embrace the trip down memory lane. The amount of information on military history and tactics Nile absorbs during these conversations puts any of her junior NCO training to shame. As Nicky finishes the story about losing a bet to Quynh when he mistakenly challenged her with an English longbow, Andy jumps in with a snippet of waiting around for Booker to finish bashing his opponent’s head in with the butt of a rifle while she, Nicky, and Joe had already dispatched another dozen with their blades.

The subject matter might be gory, but by now, Nile has enough trust in how her new family did their best to always fight on the side of right. This lightness in her chest has nothing to do with the liquor, but in how her companions have now spent almost ten minutes discussing Booker, and not once had darkness swarmed in Nicky’s vivid eyes or pinched Joe’s lips. Andy remains at the table, nibbling on another cookie, instead of disappearing into her room for a bottle.

Nile will take the win, and cheers internally, but she knows better than to push.

Then, Joe makes the offer. “We can train you too, you know. Andy may be able to kill all of us with her little finger, but Nicky and I are certainly no slouches.” Joe gestured between him and his partner with his glass.

Though the battle at Merrick’s building had mostly involved firearms, Nile remembered the horrific crack as Joe hurled the head of security to the floor. Because he had hurt Nicky. She suppresses a small shudder. “I never doubted that for a second.” Nile also had, of course, heard the van story, because Joe liked nothing better than to extol the virtues of his love and Nicky apparently had no problem bragging about if after the fact (especially if homophobes paid some sort of price, a subtext Nile picked up all too clearly).

“We know you’re a good shot,” Nicky said, picking up whatever conversational thread Joe had laid.

High praise from the sniper of the team. “Got my marksmanship badges in service rifle and service pistol.” But Nile has a hard time imagining herself wielding a sword. Even now, the memory of handling Andy’s ax— _labrys_ —in Merrick’s penthouse reminds her of an old TV show her brother had binged one summer, of men whipping swords out of their coats and duels in modern-day Paris.

Even now, her companions stare at her with appraisal. Nile tops off her glass to avoid meeting any of their eyes.

Nicky and Joe have another of their unspoken conversations, but Andy breaks the silence first. “Knives, I think. It’ll be easier to work that into the hand-to-hand combat training you need.”

Nile bristles momentarily, considering her skills in MCMAP more than adequate. But then again, Andy had broken multiple of Nile’s bones in less than a minute once she’d considering their “sparring match” on that drug plane finished. Bringing her up to Andy’s standards would take work, but Nile found the idea exciting.

“Yes,” Joe said, pointing a half-eaten cookie at Andy. “Combat blades that she can strap to her arms.”

Andy mutters something in a language Nile doesn’t recognize. Joe grins wide and responds in English. “Yes, I know you will teach her that. But Nile will learn the dirtiest street-fighting from me.”

They occasionally do this, slipping into third-person when talking about her. Nile has learned not to take offense, especially not when they discuss how they want her to fit into this extraordinary team. “I figured it’d be like learning another martial art style,” she says.

Joe flutters his hand. “It has its own art. But I think you are probably fast, which means you should learn from the fastest of us. And if you are to learn quickly, it means we will both cut each other to ribbons more than once.”

Even as Nile preens under the complimentary assessment, she agrees with what Joe leaves unspoken. These are training risks they can no longer take with Andy.

“Good,” Andy says, warmth in the tilt of her lips despite the reminder that so often brought nothing but pain to Nile’s new family. “Give her no quarter, Joe.”

He rubs his hand together. “We’ll start tomorrow.”

They all laugh at Nile’s mock groan, but then another question springs to mind. “Don’t you worry that it makes you more memorable? Carrying the swords and _labrys_.” She accentuates the last word, and Andy winks at her.

“Perhaps,” Nicky says. “And there are plenty of times we have gone on missions without them. But given a choice…” His words drift off, and he pokes Joe’s shoulder.

His partner comes to the rescue, perhaps because Nicky knows that Joe has had less alcohol or can better express his point. “Firearms are…still new,” Joe says. “And these new weapons, which spit so many bullets a second, are amazing and deadly but they are still machines. Whereas the blade I carry on my back will never jam, and it will always protect me as long as I care for it in return.”

The way that man could spin poetry out of the most arcane subjects had not yet ceased to fascinate Nile (even if it had taken her barely a week to join Andy in rolling her eyes when Nicky was the subject of Joe’s eloquence). “Okay, I think I get it,” Nile says. “Booker and I didn’t grow up with a sword or other edged weapon as our only option.” She inwardly cheers when none of her companions flinch at the name.

“We can still teach you the sword,” Andy says, with studied casualness, “if you think you’d be interested.”

“Or the _labrys,_ ” Nicky says. He bequeaths Andy with an innocent smile when she flicks a cookie crumb at him.

Another imaginary moment hits Nile, of her drawing a katana out of a trench coat. “Yeah, absolutely. But what kind of sword?” She points through the dining room wall, to the array of weapons she knows hangs in Andy’s bedroom. “I know there are options.”

For the rest of the conversation, she sits back and enjoys the animated voices that swirl through the dining room, as her companions dive into a debate about blades and their accompanying styles. They cycle through languages as appropriate, and Nile does not feel left out. Instead, the warmth of her family embraces her.

And hey, she got them to talk about Booker. Nile thinks about the draft email she has saved, unsent to Copley. Perhaps one day she’ll be able to share this conversation with her absent brother. He might not have been raised to fight with a sword, but she bets he has just as many opinions about what would fit best in her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. As a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, Nile is a junior NCO (non-commission officer) at E-4, which means she is allowed to incorporate the fancy saber in her uniform during ceremonial stuff. She would probably have been working through binders of leadership training during her "downtime" in Afghanistan.
> 
> 2\. MCMAP: Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. A legit hand-to-hand combat martial art. They have belts and everything.
> 
> 3\. I've been incorporating swords in my fiction for over 20 years. I have my idea about what I'd love to see Nile wielding in combat a century for now, but I'd also love your thoughts!


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